Texas A&M XC course conversion

It is fast, up there with Louisville, and it appears many of the teams who ran at Louisville and A&M ran similar times. Courses are fast or slow for a multitude of reasons.

Don't know if A&M is short, as both races seem to run fast (I suppose both could be short). Something that has made me think the Louisville Classic 8k is a little off is that for the last few years it runs very fast, but women's times seem more average.

Their mile markers hit around 1.01 on my watch. Total on GPS is around 5.01-5.02 on most watches. Take that for what it is. Course isn't perfectly flat, especially with that hill behind the start line. However, the straightaway is super long and straight which might help make it faster.

The course is fairly flat with the exception of one medium hill you go up twice, and a slow rising incline you go up twice. The grass is good and the competition is very good. Same case as Louisville, after checking strava the lowest distance I saw any competing athlete post was 4.97, so it is not short either. Just a relatively flat course that has very good competition.

Sliding Scale wrote:

It is fast, up there with Louisville, and it appears many of the teams who ran at Louisville and A&M ran similar times. Courses are fast or slow for a multitude of reasons.

Don't know if A&M is short, as both races seem to run fast (I suppose both could be short). Something that has made me think the Louisville Classic 8k is a little off is that for the last few years it runs very fast, but women's times seem more average.

Hmm… no I don’t think Louisville is a good comparison. First off sorta apples to oranges 5k vs 6k for women. One coach told me his girls actually hit faster 5k splits at a&m then what they ran at Louisville. The 8k isn’t close. At Louisville the first mile is fast but it’s not an overall fast course especially with the hill on the backside and the surface is softer, at a&m it’s dry and hard as a rock. Much better footing for a fast race and that stretch at the end you can really hawk a lot of ppl down if you feel good.

If you look at strava/gps and the course says 4.97 miles, it is way way short. I don't start trusting GPS on 8ks until at least 5.07 miles. All of this depending on the number of turns of course, as a straight line will always be accurate but the more turns, the more off it gets.

Bumping this thread because it might explain some suspicious results today. Is the 6k course short? If off by 20-30 seconds that would bring the results into something more reasonable.

If ranked teams ran at this course the winning mens time would 22:30 or faster.

Maybe. The record from 2015 is 23:24:20, Kosgei at SEC championships

First time at this course this past weekend. Even though it was a little warm and a little humid, the grass was dry and packed. The "hill" before the 600m straightaway is barely a hill. It is similar to the "new" Louisville course or Florida State. Basically a track for a XC meet. Distance of course checked out. Fast times probably a combination of all of the ingredients needed to run fast: decent weather, flat/fast course, and a bunch of knuckle heads who think they can run 23:30 8k/20:00 6k and hang on for something a little slower.

Yesterday the women's winner ran an 18:58 6k, so that is probably why people are wondering about the course length.

A&M is a much faster course than Louisville.

This course is dead on. Measured with tangents. It only has some slight hills and then ridiculously long straightaways. They also love running the races at stupid times like 945 am for a 6k. Temperatures sucked.

I wouldn't call this course fast for a flat 6k or 8k. It is average imo.

TAMU women don’t seem to be unusually fast running their home course.